The US media coverage of Western and Eastern terrorist attacks

President Donald Trump claimed that media under-reports terrorist attacks in Europe on a visit to US Central Command last February. “You have seen what happened in Paris and Nice. All over Europe it’s happening. It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported,” he affirmed in the wake of the threats by the ISIS.

However, evidence suggests that the US media does not only cover Western terrorist attacks but that it covers them more extensively than the Eastern terrorist attacks. More importantly, the US media also frames its coverage differently if the attack happens in a Western or Eastern country. 

What we know about the world is determined by what event or issues the media decides to cover in the news selection process. This is what the media calls news values: frequency, geographical proximity, immediacy, impact, novelty, conflict and emotion. 

Consequently, a foreign country becomes newsworthy for the US media only when their events and issues affect American citizens or US interests. Then, the US media covers foreign countries depending on that country’s relation with the USA. In this way, journalists influence the public agenda by covering certain events in deep while avoiding others.

For example, the terrorist attacks in Paris on 13th November 2015 were covered more than the Beirut bombings that happened the day before by the US media. The Paris attacks were a series of attacks by three suicide bombers in the Saint-Denis suburb, while in the Beirut attacks two terrorists set off bombs in Bourj el-Barajneh.

The US media produced 1,292 articles about the Beirut bombings and over 21 million articles about the Paris attacks. Maybe, the US media covered the Paris attacks more than the Beirut bombings because the media regards terrorist attacks with a higher number of victims more newsworthy.  In the Paris attacks, 130 people were killed, while in the Beirut bombings only 45.

However, this explanation is not accurate. Last January 2015 the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris and the Yemen bombings happened in the same day. In the first attack, there were 12 deaths, while 28 in the second. Still, the US media wrote more than 22 million articles about the Charlie Hebdo attack and only 565 about the Yemen attack, according to the American magazine The Nation.. 

Articles per terror incident according to report by The Nation. 

Probably, one of the reasons for the US media coverage gap between Western and Eastern attacks is the public perception of terrorism as a normal event for Eastern countries. However, in 2015 France had already five terrorist attacks, while Lebanon only two. Kevin Williams, Professor at Swansea University, claimed that this perception is heightened by the media practice to cover developing countries through episodic reporting of violence and war. 

 The US media covers developing countries only in negative contexts at times of crisis when they are under the spotlight of international agenda. News stories about developing countries are framed by coups, wars, famines and natural disasters. Amnon Cavari, Professor at the Lauder School of Government, emphasised that everyday life stories from less economically developed countries rarely appear in the US media outlets.

The location of the event also plays an important role in determining the US media massive coverage of the Paris attacks. The number of international media outlets in Paris is certainly higher than the Beirut one. So, the role of the foreign correspondent as the cultural intermediary between the story and the audience becomes crucial. However, the media financial crisis has caused the decline in the long-stay correspondents and the rise of parachute and fire-fighter reporters.

Parachute and fire-fighter reporters lack the time for a deep knowledge of the country they are reporting about. This could explain the superficial coverage of Beirut bombings. On the other hand, local correspondents know the country and its people but, journalism in developing countries is not like we know it in Western nations. John Allan Namu, an award-winning investigative reporter in Africa, explained how in developing countries journalism is not independent because the government is the most important advertiser. 

Still, the public shapes their perception of the world through media language. Robert Entman, Professor at George Washington University, defined media frame as an “interpretive package” that prioritizes certain meaning of an event from a specific angle.

The US media used two different types of journalistic language when it covered the Paris and Beirut attacks. The language was based on terror and mourning for the Paris attacks, while it was based on the ethnographic and religious composition of the district attacked for the Beirut bombings. Consequently, the victims of the French attacks were more humanised because the articles were not written in the same detached style of the ones about the Lebanon terrorist attacks.

For the Paris attacks USA Today created a live update article "The Paris terror attacks: What we know now" and The Washington Post headline read “Assault on Paris: More than 140 killed”. Then, The New Yorker wrote “Terror strikes in Paris”.

The headlines from these media outlets reflected a language based on terror and mourning through the words “terror” and “assault” and the urgency to have 24/7 update news because what is happening is important. The full articles humanise the victims because they emphasise the nonmilitary nature of the event and focus on human emotions.

On the other hand, for the Beirut attack, USA Today headline was “Islamic State claims twin suicide blasts in Beirut, 43 dead” and The Washington Post wrote “Islamic State says it carried out Beirut suicide bombing that killed dozens”. Then, The New Yorker included the attack in a long article “The genesis and Growth of Global Jihad”.

The headlines had almost a formulaic construction: terrorist group, arm, location and death count. The full articles were focused on the terrorist group responsible and not on the victims. There were not live update articles about the bombings.

 This US media frame of the two terrorist attacks is an example of what academics call frame dominance. Garcia Gurrrionero, Professor at the University of Madrid, claimed that in frame dominance only one frame dominates the media, while in frame parity there are two or more popular interpretations of equal value.

The New York Times front page on November 14th was dedicated to the Paris attacks. The Beirut bombings were not mentioned in the front page on November 13th.  

The main problem with frame dominance is that the media fails to report objectively what is happening around the world. However, Jurgen Gerhards and Mike Schafer, Professors at the Free University of Berlin and University of Zurich, claimed that the US media has the right to report from a Western point of view, as much as Al-Jazeera does from an Arab perspective.

In fact, the media is no longer a top-down system of communication because the rise of the internet and social media allow the audience to influence the news agenda. Significantly, the US media coverage of the two terrorist attacks reflects the US citizens' interest. The research interest for the Paris attacks was of 96 in contrast to 44 for the Beirut bombings, according to Google Trend. 

Overall, media covers Western terrorist attacks more in deep than the Eastern ones because of cultural familiarity. People are more interested in people like themselves and the media produces the articles that their audience want. The Paris terrorist attacks were more popular in the USA because Americans could see themselves in the victims.

But, people’s interests are also shaped by the media selection of news. What the media avoids as well as what appears is dominated by the stereotypes of the people and the country they are from. Edward Said, professor at Columbia University, argued that Orientalism is a framework to understand the unfamiliar and to make Eastern people appear indifferent and threatening.

In the future, the US media coverage of Eastern terrorist attacks could improve if journalists cover war following Martin Bell’s approach of “journalism of attachment”, focused on the human costs of the war rather than on the political and military operations. In this way, journalists could change the Western perception of the East as a land of terrorism and not of human beings.